Brussels bombings prompt calls in Germany for better data exchange

BERLIN-Europe urgently needs to improve the way its security agencies share information, members of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives were reported as saying, stoking a debate on how to tighten security while safeguarding data protection. “Faster

communication is important so that tips about possible attacks can be quickly assessed and terrorist acts can be prevented if possible before they take place or cleared up in a more focused way,” Germany’s EU Commissioner Guenther Oettinger told the daily Bild. Oettinger, a member of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, called for data protection rules to be standardised to make it possible for security agencies in other EU member states can access data. “It can’t be that we collect data in Germany and that investigations in other countries fail because they are not allowed to look at it. We need a security union,” he said.